


Education is a necessary evil

by deadbody



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Facebook sucks, Humor, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-14
Updated: 2012-03-14
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadbody/pseuds/deadbody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint loves coffee. Tony loves booze. There's a guy who loves America a little too much and school really sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Education is a necessary evil

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to mixomixo, written on a spurt of creativity and boredom. I hope you enjoy.

_So I was hit by a car the other day._

Seriously. It'd be better if he could say it was a joke but no, it wasn't. And he knew it wasn't something to be joked about; he knew people died from it, but he was still alive and kicking and kind of bummed out about the whole thing. At least it gave him a proper excuse to fuck around with people by throwing it around.

'Sorry I missed your ridiculously lame party .. kinda got hit by a car.'

Cue panicked audience.

That would've been the perfect excuse, if he'd had a lame party to avoid. But no, he hadn't been able to use it. Although it had been pretty handy at the time since he'd skipped out on the whole family dinner thing because he was at the hospital, flirting with the pretty nurse that smiled a lot. He'd been dosed with heavy painkillers and dispatched later with a bottle of aspirin. He hadn't even spent too long at the hospital, barely a day, and the best thing was that he'd missed the colossal fight between his parents that ended with broken plates all over the floor of the dining room and supposedly a broken nose.

Later, he confirmed that the broken nose was a lie and what did he expect, really? Barney had been the one to say it and Barney was a lying sack of shit.

Obviously the first thing he needed to do when he got home was post it on Facebook. Hah. That would show .. whomever he was friends with. Not that he cared at the moment and he didn't really keep up with the whole "social network" thing to really keep track of all the shit that got thrown around in the site. Honestly, he didn't even stick around to check if people replied to it. He closed the window and opened another tab, looking for something else to distract him. Possibly porn. That was always a prime solution in time of boredom.

It hadn't even been a good accident. All things considered, and it wasn't like he had a death wish or something, but there was a clear level of badassery that was lacking. Mostly, it'd be lame and rather pathetic. In fact, he could've categorized it as one of the most pathetic machine versus human collisions to ever occur, and he'd seen a lot of them in movies and on Youtube.

It'd been the wonderful and delicious cherry on top of a craptastic weekend that'd stretched out impossibly long. If he didn't know better, he could've claimed that time stood still in Iowa. It was the downside of going to a small town in the middle of nowhere. And maybe it'd been the bad vibes he'd been carrying — he blamed his dad — and the fact that not even the delicious piece of Heaven he'd been drinking was enough to deter that ominous and fleeting thought of depression and _'I wish I was dead right now'_ that brought the onslaught of horrible luck.

And such depressive thoughts — that were totally uncalled for but always seem to surface whenever alcohol and boredom were involved — came and went but never stayed for long. They were dark secrets that he would never say out loud. Not even to his closest friends, because some things were meant to be kept bottled up, and pushed behind the whole macho façade he presented to the world.

His train of thought got interrupted when his phone went off and he made a mad dash, throwing himself on his bed, to grab the phone that vibrated on top of his night stand.

The letters were bold against the background and the word 'Asshole' flashed on the screen. He debated answering. Had Stark seen the Facebook thing? Was that why he was calling? God forbid he called because he _cared_. Because the guy knew better, and any and all worries were labeled under "gay" and "please, shut the fuck up, you're not my mother". Besides, it was weird. Clint had known the guy for a year and a few months and he _still_ couldn't believe he was friends with a semi-sort-of-famous person; especially because it was Tony fucking Stark and what the fuck was he doing hanging out with an economically-challenged guy from the middle of fucking nowhere, Iowa. Their friendship should've been an insult to the universe but somehow it worked. He would never admit it — not even under the promise of pain — but he liked their whole fucked up association and the fact that Tony was an okay friend. Well, more than okay but that also fell under the list of unspeakable things he wasn't allowed to even think about.

The phone stopped ringing and Clint pulled a face. Unsure if he was happy or upset at the sudden silence and the mark almost mockingly, saying that he had a missed call. But the phone vibrated once more and a little icon at the corner let him know that he had just received a text.

**[ are you still alive, bitch? ]**

His lips pulled into a grin and he sat up, fingers already typing back a reply.

**[ is that concern for little ol' me, stark? ]**

The reply was immediate and it made him laugh.

**[ no. you still owe me five bucks. I don't want to collect from a corpse. ]**

Tony didn't care about the money. And the whole thing had come from a badly placed bet. Clint really needed to learn to keep himself from making idiotic bets when he was drunk, especially when he was hanging out with Tony or any other of the jocks that littered the campus. Then again, a lot of those bets got him some spare change and money was always welcomed.

But he owed him an explanation of sorts, because he figured that not everyone walked away from a car accident without a scratch on them. Not that Tony knew that because Clint enjoyed being a cryptic asshole for his own sick amusement. Especially when it made Tony frown and get that pinched look on his face. The guy loved to know things and withholding information was a sure way to piss him off. And Clint's favorite pastime was pissing people off.

**[ not a corpse yet. lucky you. long story short: there was a car, a chick, a cat and a hospital. also a coffee cup. ]**

His phone vibrated again and — why had he put the thing on silent anyway? — the word 'Red' flashed in his screen and he answered it quickly because Natasha was still in the motherland and why the fuck was she calling him when she could've easily texted him or sent him an e—mail? He could've described the feeling as having butterflies in his stomach but that was lame. He was experiencing a herd of a thousand tiny dinosaurs galloping and twisting his insides with the fuzzies.

"Tasha," he grinned, unable to keep his face from lighting up at the sound of her voice on the other side of the world, all cross the beautiful piece of technology called phone. Her demand was simple.

What the fuck happened?

To which he explained ...

It all began on Friday. Technically, it began on a Wednesday afternoon when he got inside a plane to visit his family back in Waverly. The school was having something or another and classes were cancelled for a week starting on Thursday. He never paid much attention to official announcements that didn't revolve around the sports community. Usually it was some stupid holiday or the school was going through some kind of crisis or one of those annoying flu outbreaks that had everyone screaming bloody murder and panicking.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that he had a long ass weekend and he wasn't supposed to be back in school until next Wednesday. The bad news was that his brother had picked that exact moment to announce his engagement to this girl and the family was needed back home _yesterday_. So after mentally and psychologically preparing himself for the trip to Hell, he'd boarded the plane to leave the sunny coast of California. He could've spent the week partying with Tony, getting drunk and drunk calling his gorgeous girlfriend back in Russia but no. No, of course not. When did things ever go his way? The universe had a sadistic sense of humor when it came to him and Clint was doomed to spend the next few days dealing with the barbaric side of the Barton family he wanted to leave far, far behind.

So, Wednesday night was uneventful and he was very thankful because it took a lot of willpower to keep himself collected and casual about the whole "meet my fiancé, isn't she gorgeous?" thing, especially when Barney liked to show off the girl as if she was a trophy wife. Which okay, with those boobs, and Clint swore on his life that he wasn't staring (even though he was), it was totally safe to say that maybe she was purely for aesthetic purposes. Until she opened her mouth and wow, was she an opinionated girl or what? Other people would probably call her a bitch, but Clint prided himself on being more respectful than that. At least more than his brother and father put together.

And there were cousins; cousins he'd never met before and people he didn't even know existed. It was true, what people said, “Nothing like a marriage or a funeral to bring people together.” So he smiled and shook hands and gave awkward hugs to people he'd never met before, and then he'd left the house to "get some fresh air", which really meant he was walking around the neighborhood until he deemed it safe to head back to the house. Safe was a rough concept because it was never safe in the Barton household, but that was a story for another day.

Thursday had been filled with even more family things, like breakfast and girl talk about the wedding and the men getting drunk and watching television and the kids running around the house like it was some sort of cheap amusement park. The plan was to stay low and hide out in his room until the apocalypse passed. He was all set. He had his phone and his laptop and he'd been able to hack the signal from the neighbors because his parents didn't use or believe in the internet. Archaic old farts, that's what they were. But then sometime around noon his stomach started growling and he had to go out into the jungle and deal with the freaks that loitered around the house. That meant evading little kids and staking out the kitchen, waiting for the opportune time to grab food and run; a task easier said than done. It was a warzone out there and the screams filtered from under his door, fueling his imagination with ridiculous mental images that often involved cavemen, pointy sticks and badly drawn figures in blood all over the walls.

Clearly, he needed to stop watching so much shit on Youtube, because his imagination tended to run wild when left unchecked.

The Hunt for Food had been interrupted by his _dear_ father, who'd demanded his presence. At least the guy was surrounded by other guys and Clint figured it was safe to approach. That didn't stop him from keeping his distance, just in case the bottle in the man's hand decided to "accidentally" slip and smack Clint on the face. Because it'd happened before and it usually ended with _“fucking shit ow"_ and _"is that fucking blood on the carpet?_ “

"Boy!" he boomed and waved in the general direction of the kitchen. "Get more beer."

The rest of the pact of hyenas laughed. Clint wasn't sure if there was a joke he was missing.

You know, other than the fact that he wasn't legal and technically wasn't able to buy beer by himself, but he knew better than to argue that point. God knows how many bottles he'd get thrown in the face and he wanted to keep his blood inside his body at least for another day.

"Yes sir," he bowed his head and ran away from the room before the king demanded anything else.

Why couldn't Barney get the beer? It was his fault the family had assembled and it was his fault the guys were all drunk, demanding more booze. But no, of course he wouldn't do it, because Barney was too busy laughing with the hyenas and gloating about the hot, sexy piece of ass he was going to marry.

If Clint ever found someone worthy to marry, he sure as Hell wouldn't introduce her to the family. Nope. He'd elope. Or maybe tell her his entire family was dead and he was an orphan. He'd take the pity and sob story over having to deal with another family reunion of epic proportions. Vegas was always nice. Elvis could marry them.

His mind skipped a bit there and for a second he pictured Natasha in a long, white dress, wearing a veil and holding a bouquet of roses. Or another type of flowers that looked pretty and complimented her eyes. Or her hair, whatever, he wasn't picky. He could even do with her naked but the priest might find that offensive against God and all that, and he certainly didn't want to offend the All Mighty above.

His thoughts went back to beer and he grimaced, thinking of his options, which weren't many. He ended up asking his mom because that's what mothers were for and he wasn't above begging her for help.

The women had taken over the backyard and the kitchen and he found half of the parental force outside, talking to Aunt Number 1 and some older cousin that'd already popped out kids. Her name might've been Andy but he wasn't sure. And he didn't even bother to try to remember his aunt's name because it was something that started with a G and made him think of horrible Japanese things involving tentacles.

"Mom, he wants more beer."

Edith looked up and sighed heavily. She'd seen it coming, of course she had, but before she could say something, the cousin stood up and dusted off the front of her skirt. "I'll go with him and get the beer."

Clint glanced back and forth between then and shrugged. He didn't care who went with him so long as he came back before the king demanded in head in retribution for taking too long. "Cool, c'mon."

"Be careful and don't talk to strangers!" Edith said in her gravest 'I'm your mother so you have to listen to me' voice.

Which earned a rather pathetic whine from Clint, " _Mom_ , I'm not a kid. Jeez, I know that."

A valuable lesson he ignored most of the time back in California. It was school, wasn't he supposed to socialize? Unless she meant the crazy guys that sold pot behind the science building. Clint had enough brains in his head to ignore those guys, especially after last year's incident. But again, that was a story better left buried deep down and never brought up.

So Andy — who actually turned out to be Joyce — was actually nice and funny. She was a cousin from his mother's side of the family and liked cartoons despite being almost thirty and having two kids. He'd never laughed so hard with someone from his family, but then again he hadn't known anyone other than the ogre, the lying bastard and his loving mother.

The men quieted down after they returned with the beer and Joyce excused herself to go back to the backyard. Clint rummaged through the fridge and the cupboards and completed the Hunt for Food. The rest of the day was spent in relative peace, except for that one moment where he thought someone had been shot but it'd only been one of the little kids. Apparently, they were playing superheroes and one of them jumped from a window in the second floor. No hospitals were involved and the kid had bounced off into the bushes, gaining only scars and some bruises.

It'd been good enough to put on Facebook.

And then there was Friday.

Oh, cursed Friday.

Rebecca Black had doomed all Fridays with her obnoxious song that summoned bad luck like a black cat in heat.

His pet frog died on a Friday.

It was during the spring and it was anticlimactic as all Hell. But Clint had been seven then and Mr. Froggy (because he'd been _seven_ , goddamnit, and his creativity had severely lacked back then) had kicked the bucket.

He found out years later that his dad had stepped on the frog and well, his dad was pretty buff and tall and Mr. Froggy had been this tiny thing and that's the fucking circle of life.

His mom had been nice about it and she'd helped him bury Mr. Froggy out in the backyard, next to the morning glories. The service had been short. The frog had been buried in an old shoe box that'd been way too big for the small body but Clint had filled it up with flowers found in their garden.

They'd had ice-cream after that and his mom had watched cartoons with him until he fell asleep at night.

There were many other bad things that'd happened on Fridays.

And as it was, Fridays were, apparently, perfect days for getting run over.

So this one in particular had started off normal. No obnoxious songs waking him up at the crack of dawn or random screams inside the house. In fact, the quiet was almost unsettling and by the time he left his room, he noticed the house was empty.

A post-it threatened to fall from its position on the fridge and he grabbed the note to go over it.

'Dad's at work. The guys went fishing and we're out shopping.'

He was alone. All alone with no adult supervision and no children to take care of.

"Sweet Jesus, thank you," he mock sobbed before opening the fridge and stuffing his face with leftover food from the previous day.

Facebook held his attention for a while and then he proceeded to beat the shit out of people in violent, online games but then he ditched the house before his dad came back from work because the women were still out and so were the other jackasses and he wasn't about to be caught alone with the guy.

Waverly was small but not tiny. It was the type of town where everyone knew each other. Though that hardly meant they were all nice to each other. Because Mrs. Baffurt at the end of the street was a mean bitch who lived with too many cats. Clint had tried to count them all once but he'd gotten to twelve and then he'd lost track of them. And the owner of the local bar, Dale Thomas, was a real dick. He was also pretty tight with his dad.

Assholes flock together and whatever. Or attract each other.

Maybe that's why he and Tony were such okay friends.

He somehow ended up downtown, which consisted of a park, a small plaza and a lot of shops nearby. It was a nice day. The weather was okay, not too hot and not too cold, and very pleasant. People walked around and old couples sat down at the park, feeding birds and doing other things that old people usually did whenever they visited parks.

Clint was minding his own business and giving out a vibe of 'don't fuck with me' and 'I'm too cool for this shit'. One hand deep in his pocket and shoulders slouched. He was wearing a black jacket that looked like it belonged in the trash rather than covering a human being. The whole image was ruined by the phone and his texting. And the stupid look on his face because of the goofy texting.

Natasha usually replied to one out of eight texts he sent. On average. Sometimes he'd sent fifteen and get a short one in return. She was a woman of few words and he respected that. Besides, she had a way with words and with silence. Silence from his end — that is to say no bitching or whining — earned him points for nude pictures. Semi-nude, really, but the difference was lost between his head and his _other_ head.

He had a total of two and it wasn't his fault. Regardless of what Tony said, Clint wasn't addicted to bitching. It wasn't his fault that it came out naturally. The blonde had the special ability of being able to talk incessantly to the point of annoyance.

And it was, in the middle of one of the texts, that he saw it. And he knew: his fate.

He realized in that second that the world would end and an angelic choir would sing its praise and someone would vomit rainbows nearby and cry tears of pure happiness.

Or maybe the tears were his own because there was a coffee shop in the corner that he'd never seen before, which meant it was new, and because it was new, it had a sign on its window. A glorious sign that made him melt inside and weep.

_Grand opening 50% off all drinks._

Being poor most of the time sucked. Being poor most of the time and having Tony fucking Stark as a friend didn't suck as much though. But Clint was in fucking middle of nowhere, Iowa and there was no rich friend around him to buy him food out of pity. Not that the blonde looked malnourished — well, okay .. so maybe he did but it was just a little bit and he was a student! A broke student. Of course he'd look a little anorexic. It wasn't his fault he didn't have a job and couldn't stuff his face with food every single day.

And he was addicted to caffeine.

So the phone was stuffed in one of his pockets and he ran to the little coffee shop to buy the biggest cup of coffee they had to offer. He got some weird blend with vanilla, hazelnut and cinnamon that almost made him come on the spot after the first sip.

He'd tasted Heaven and Heaven was good, delicious and creamy inside his mouth.

The next few minutes blurred together into a horrible flash that came with its own Matrix special effect where everything slowed down horribly.

The cup was warm in his hand and he stood at the corner of the street, outside the store and sipped the delicious coffee while he contemplated the meaning of life. The meaning of life bored him and his mind quickly turned to less altruistic thoughts and more towards picturing Natasha wearing nothing but red lingerie. A soft purr sounded off to his right and a cat rubbed its head against his leg. He looked down and smiled at the feline. He was too busy kneeling and petting the cat to notice the car driving down the road.

Now, usually that would've been fine because he was still standing in the sidewalk and the car was still on its proper lane. And the laws of the road dictated that a car had to stay on its damn lane and not get on top of sidewalks. But the driver wasn't watching the road. Oh no. He was too focused on the brunette with the skilled mouth, the brunette that sucked and licked and kissed all over his hardened length. His eyes fluttered in ecstasy and the car veered off its lane.

Clint looked up and time slowed down and he had a random fleeting thought about butterfly wings and weren't they supposed to change the fate or course of history or something like that? The wind caught her hair and flowed over her shoulder and he could've sworn that their eyes met. They probably did, for about a second, because he was sure that hers widened in surprise, panic and maybe a little bit of lust — or whatever, he could've imagined that but he liked to think the chick would've dumped the driver for him because come on, he was younger and hotter — and his did this thing where they went a little cross-eyed because _holy shit, was that car getting too close or what?_

Her lips moved and formed a perfect "O" and her lips looked good enough to bite. If only there hadn't been that little bit of white dribbling down the side of her mouth that made him cringe in disgust.

He probably should've moved. Or jumped on top of the car. Or tried doing that cool thing from that one movie where the guy jumped on the wall and flipped, totally avoiding the car.

Instead, he stood there like an idiot with the cup still on his hand and his eyes wide open with surprise, maybe a little bit of shock, and definitely a lot of sheer terror. His thoughts went from "Holy shit, she is smoking hot. Where have you been all my life?" to "OH MY FUCKING GOD. I'M GOING TO DIE. I'M GOING TO DIE YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL AND I WILL NEVER HAVE A THREESOME IN MY LIFE AND OHMYFUCKINGGODWHATISEVERYONEGOINGTOSAY—"

And somewhere between the panic, the terror and the arousal because okay, that girl was seriously hot, came the screeching sound of the breaks. Either the guy had noticed he was about to crash into the corner of a building or the girl had slammed down on the breaks.

If it was fate, then so be it. But if it wasn't, Clint was going to write a very angry letter to the ones in charge above because what the fuck.

He wished he could've said something dramatic and cool. His last moments were going to be wasted and the only witness was going to the cat. Or not, maybe the cat had been smarter and fled the scene. He didn't even register the yells from nearby bystanders or notice that his own mouth was open and he was screaming very loudly and not in a very manly fashion. At least his jeans were still dry.

Man, if Stark ever found out, he wasn't going to let him live it down.

Whatever other thought he had vanished, leaving him hollow and scared.

And then he got nailed by the car.


End file.
